you’ll hardly see him.”
Anthony was trying to help, but Deene resented his cousin’s assistance, implying as it did that Anthony would be working shoulder to the plough, while Deene drank and gambled and frolicked. If Anthony had kept his big mouth shut…
While Aelfreth put William through his paces an hour later, it occurred to Deene that if Eve hadn’t overheard Anthony, Deene would still be left trying to puzzle out a way to explain the custody suit to her. The papers had sat in the desk drawer for days, with Deene making up a new excuse each day for why he did not give the solicitors leave to prime their barristers and fire off the first true scandal of the Season.
“Yon colt is pouting.” Bannister’s tone was lugubrious. “He wants the lady to watch him go.”
“Lady Deene is a trifle indisposed.”
“Then the colt will be indisposed too. Your horse has fallen in love, and though you breed him to half the shire, he’ll not try his heart out until her ladyship is on that rail, watching him go.”
“For God’s sake, Bannister, he’s a horse. He can’t fall in love.”
Bannister snorted and fell silent, leaving Deene to watch as his prized stallion put in a lackluster performance for no apparent reason.
“He wants her ladyship,” Aelfreth said when the horse was making desultory circles on the rail. “He kept looking at her spot, and she’s not there.”
Even Deene had seen that much. It was pathetic, how a dumb animal…
“Keep walking him, Aelfreth. My wife has taken me into dislike, but she’s as smitten with the damned horse as ever, or I very much mistake the matter. Bannister, have my saddle put on the mare.”
When Deene reached the house, he was relieved to find Eve in one of her divided skirts, her hair neatly arranged into a bun pinned snugly at her nape.
“You’re feeling better.” He made the observation cautiously, no longer certain of anything except that where his marriage ought to be, a battleground was forming.
“Somewhat. I will try a quiet hack on Sweetness, mostly because I think you and I need a chance to speak privately, Deene.”
This did not bode well. If she was going to tell him she wanted her own bedroom, he’d fight her. If she wanted to visit her parents, he’d go with her. If she was going to try to talk him out of trying to gain custody of Georgie…
He’d listen. He wouldn’t make any promises, but he would listen.
“A hack is exactly what I had in mind.” He took her by the hand and led her to the stables, almost as if he were afraid she’d go marching off somewhere else did he turn loose of her.
When they reached the stables, Eve stopped in her tracks and dropped his hand. “My lord, what is your saddle doing on my mare?”
“A change of pace, so to speak. Willy was stale this morning. I was thinking you could hack him out, and I’d take your mare.”
Ah, the reaction was satisfying. Eve came to an abrupt halt, blinked, and then… she smiled. A slow, sweet curving of her lips, a genuine expression of pleasure that had nothing to do with firing shots or joining battles.
Until she cocked her head. “Are you trying to bribe me, Deene?”
“I am not—unless you want me to bribe you?”
“Bribe me.” She put her hands on her hips and glared at him, as if…
“Oh. As in, you will not suffer any more headaches if I put you up on Willy?” Crudely put, but he’d apparently gotten the right of it. “This has not crossed my mind. The horse was dull this morning, not mentally engaged in his work, and I think having you up on him will address what ails him. And as for the rest of it…” He glanced around and saw the lads were all giving them a wide berth. “I need an heir, Evie, and you are my wife.”
He’d kept his voice down, but where such idiot words had come from, he did not know. They were the truth, of course, and no insult to anybody, but they’d come out of his mouth like so much ammunition, when what he’d wanted to say was something else entirely. Something to do with needing her in his arms and in his life.
Eve tugged on her riding gloves, looking damnably composed. “Shall we mount up?”
He tossed her onto Willy’s back—such a little thing, his wife, and so full of dignity—then swung onto the mare. Willy was a gentleman and Sweetness not given to coming into season at the first sight of a stallion, else the ride would have been a disaster, though Deene privately considered Bannister was right: as long as Willy had Eve’s attention, the horse would have nothing to do with mares or work or anything else.
Rather like his owner.
When the horses had cantered and trotted and hopped logs and otherwise had a good little romp—with Eve and Willy looking like they’d been hacking out together for years—Deene brought the mare back to the walk.
“If we’re to have a private discussion, Wife, then we have exactly one more mile in which to have it before every lad on the property will overhear us.”
She readjusted her reins then petted her horse. “Can you be dissuaded from filing this suit, Deene?”
“I don’t think so.” He spoke slowly, wondering where even the smallest doubt might come from. “Dolan was not my sister’s choice, and as far as I’m concerned, he cost her her life.”
Eve grimaced. “How does a husband cost his wife her life?”
“He forces children on her when she has already shown that her constitution is not suited to childbearing. I can only think what my sister suffered…”
He fell silent and disciplined himself not to tighten his hands on the reins. “She begged me with her dying breath to look out for her family, Eve. I cannot abandon the child now.”
“You’ve tried being a doting uncle?”
“Dolan won’t have it.”
“Here is what I will not have, Deene. I will not have you spending us into the poorhouse to create scandal, when in a few years, I am likely the one who will be responsible for presenting Georgie to Polite Society. I can prevail on Mr. Dolan to see reason in this regard if you’ll allow it.”
The mare came to a halt without Deene consciously cueing his mount. “It’s ten years until her come out, Evie. I cannot wait ten years to keep a promise to my sister, not when Dolan can betroth the girl wherever he pleases at any point, and have the contracts be binding on all parties. He can ship her to Switzerland, or France, to her relations in Boston or Baltimore, for God’s sake… Marie wanted her daughter raised here, in the style befitting…”
Eve regarded him steadily, Willy standing as still as a statue beneath her. “You need an heir, Deene, and I am happy to give you as many heirs as the Lord sees fit to bless us with, but I will not bring down more scandal on my family, much less allow you to use my good name, my standing, and my entire dowry to do it. Find another way to keep your promise to your sister, or until I do present your niece to the sovereign ten years hence, I’m afraid— should you file those papers—I will be besieged by an entire, possibly never-ending plague of headaches.”
She touched her heels to Willy’s sides, and the colt bounded off, a flat chestnut streak against the undulating spring grass, the woman on his back completing a picture of grace, beauty, and strength as she rode him home.
Eve realized after about a week that her strategy wasn’t working. Part of the problem was that other than preventing Deene from starting his lawsuit, she wasn’t entirely sure what her aim had been.
To keep him at arm’s length?
That wasn’t happening. Each night, he made deeper inroads on her attempts to separate their routine: he brushed her hair, he attended her baths, he helped her into and out of her clothing, and he asked for her assistance with his.
The staff was colluding with him, telling him when she ordered a bath, when she’d asked not to be disturbed in the middle of an afternoon. It was maddening, really, to find such a pleasant, considerate husband where Eve needed to find a calculating, underhanded, self-interested opponent.
